Definition and advantages to Open Access Scientific Publication and Research Data
Open Access (OA) means unrestricted and free of charge online access and reuse of scientific information. In the context of research, scientific information can refer to (i) peer-reviewed publications (published in scholarly journals) or (ii) research data (data underlying publications, curated data and/or raw data). Authors can apply open licenses that stipulate that their work can be freely re-used or re-distributed as long as their original contribution is appropriately credited.
What are the advantages for researchers and the scientific community to make published works and accompanying datasets freely accessible and reusable through Open Access (OA)?
OA offers a full and broad access to research publications and data sets that helps (see table “Benefits to OA & Open Data).
The authors:
higher diffusion and visibility of their research results
higher citation rate of their publications
The scientific community:
build on previous research results (improvement of results quality and reproducibility)
foster collaboration and reduce duplications of research studies (higher efficiency)
accelerate innovation (scientific, technical et medical progress made faster)
involve citizens and society (improved transparency of the scientific process)
While the citation advantage of OA published articles remains a subject of debate, the review made by SPARC on a large number of studies confirms the added value of OA (see several sources of information bellow). On average, the citation advantage of OA papers is 40.3% more citations while the citation disadvantage is 27% less citations for non-OA papers (based on a total sample size of 209,000 papers) (Archambault E. et al., 2014).
There are three main and non-mutually exclusive roads for the Open Access of scientific publications that are supported at UNIL/CHUV: Gold Road, Green road and Read & Publish model
The Gold Road: the article is published in an Pur Gold Open Access journal with an open licence such as Creative Common licence.
The Green road or self -archiving: the accepted author manuscript is archived on the university repository (Serval at UNIL) by the researcher – or a representative – in addition to the commercial publication.
The hybrid model: In addition to the Green Road and the Gold Road, a hybrid business model is proposed by the majority of publishers. In this case, journals that sell subscriptions also offer authors the possibility of making their publications OA after the payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs). Due to the double dipping resulting from this situation (payment of journal subscriptions and additional APC publication fees), UNIL and funding agencies (eg. SNSF) do not support open-access publications in hybrid journals.
The read and publish model: a new path is currently possible with the National Read&Publish Switzerland licenses when agreements are made with publishers that cover not only newspaper subscriptions but also part of the APC fees of authors from Swiss institutions for the Open Access release of their articles.
Gold Open Access Financial Support at UNIL/CHUV
UNIL/CHUV researchers can benefit from numerous resources to finance the Author Processing Charges (APCs) necessary to provide Open Access their scientific publications following the gold path.
In the case of publications funded by a SNSF subside, the SNSF provides grants to finance scientific publications that are made available immediately in pur gold open access journals, without restriction and free of charge. Payment of processing charges can be requested directly via the OA platform of the SNSF (mySNF). For more information
Within the framework of negotiations conducted by swissuniversites at the national level with publishing houses such as Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley, UNIL/CHUV researchers can benefit from a new “Read & Publish” licence model which covers both access to the journals (Read) and their Open Access publication costs in the same journals (Publish).
FBM/CHUV researchers who would like to have more information about the journals for which they benefit from partial or total coverage of their APC costs can contact us.
Research & Publications Officer
Sandrine Pernier
Tél. +41 (0)21 314 50 81
sandrine.pernier@chuv.ch
Green Open Access Support at UNIL/CHUV
UNIL/CHUV institutional repository (Serval)
Why archive your publications in UNIL repository ?
Where should researchers working at UNIL or CHUV self-archive their documents?
Which kind of documents and which version of the document can be self-archived?
What are the copyright and licences legal aspects that the authors need to respect?
When can Open Access to a peer-reviewed article or book be provided?
FBM/CHUV researchers who would like to deposit and give free Open Access to their publications through the UNIL/CHUV institutional repository (Serval) can contact the BiUM publication management unit. We will provide you with guidance on how to share your publications through Serval to increase the visibility of your work and to comply with funding agencies (SNFS, H2020) policies. BiUM librarians are well aware of copyright, licenses and self-archiving rules and will help you in addressing these legal issues.
For Trainings concerning these aspects are also provided by our service on a regular basis contact directly cecile.lebrand@chuv.ch
Our unit offers to help you to self-archive and give Open Access to your publication to Serval in compliance with publishers’ legal agreements:
By archiving your “accepted author manuscript” for you if you send it by email to cecile.lebrand@chuv.ch
By guiding you: consult our tutorial on how to deposit FBM/CHUV documents to Serval.
Tools
Ask us about the use of the Sherpa/Romeo database for legal OA deposit (copyright, versioning, embargo period) and about the article version that you may deposit on Serval in compliance with publishers’ legal requirements.
For helping you to find your Author Manuscript version use the Direct2AAM guide, available for most major journals, that will provide you easy to follow instructions for authors to obtain your Author Accepted Manuscript from their journal submission system, where the AAM is stored during the publishing process.
Why archive your publications in Serval repository ?
i. The scientific production of UNIL & CHUV is collected in one place and is preserved safely and sustainably
dissemination of the information and promotion of the UNIL intellectual outputs,
ensure accurate, comprehensive and sustainable archiving of scientific documents,
a long-term archiving is guaranteed for publications with permanent URNs
ii. Deposit of publications in Serval enhances the visibility and outcome of your work
International distribution, diffusion and discoverability of Serval publications are ensured through regular harvesting by search engine (Google,…) and repositories aggregators (OpenAIRE, OpenDOAR, DART-Europe …).
iii. You can easily refer to your publications from your personal MyUnil web page
iv. Respond to Open Access directives from SNSF and H2020.
UNIL and CHUV allow researchers to self-archive their publications in “Serval” in order to meet the guideline requirements of the Swiss and European funding agencies on the obligation to making their published results openly available.
The researcher shall deposit and give free access to their published work on Serval following the legal aspects on self-archiving and OA on institutional repositories. This is the only currently possible approach for effective and legal OA deposit and to circumvent the copyright constraints set by publishers.
Europe PMC is a free to access, searchable resource for biomedical and life sciences research literature. It provides access to over 31m abstracts – derived from PubMed and other sources – and almost 4m full text research articles. This content is integrated with the underlying research data – such as protein and chemical compound databases – thus providing researchers with the ability to seamlessly move from article to data and vice-versa. The research process is further enhanced by services such as Europe PMC-ORCID integration which allows researchers to unambiguously get credit for their research outputs. Europe PMC also provide programmatic access to its holdings – which ensures that this content can be harvested, redistributed and built upon for further use by anyone.
Europe PMC Funders provide their researchers with the opportunity to make their research outputs freely available and easily discoverable within a well-managed, cost-effective and highly available literature repository. In turn, this helps Europe PMC Funders to increase the visibility of the research they fund and monitor how it is being used.
The SNSF, is since April 2018 a new Europe PMC funding group member,
If you recently received a life sciences grant, a Europe PMC Plus account has been created for you.
Your account will give you the opportunity to deposit with Europe PMC publications (Accepted Author Manuscript) financed by the SNSF, to link your publications with the SNSF subsidies and to centralize your publication and quote data in a personal space.
The SNSF strongly encourages life science researchers to use the services offered by Europe PMC and the Europe PMC Plus account. Both accompany and facilitate the application of the NSF OA policy.
The Sherpa/RoMEO database provides policy details and explanations on how to figure out the publisher’s and journal’s guidelines for self-archiving and Open Access.
Publisher sharing policy
Many publishers provide a sharing policy found in the instructions for authors that allows self-archiving of published articles or final peer-reviewed manuscripts.
What to deposit?
Publisher’s final version of the paper: publishers rarely allow the deposit of the published article (publisher PDF) to make it OA in a repository, except if authors pay publication fees (APCs) in OA journals or hybrid journals to make their article full open access.
OR
Final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication, also called post-print: Often, publishers only allow the deposit and OA release of this author accepted version.
When should Open Access be provided?
Authors must ensure that the OA to the deposited publication respects the time delay (embargo period) fixed by the publisher (starting from the publication date). The embargo typically last from 6 to 48 months. The Sherpa/RoMEO database and publishers websites provide accurate information on embargo periods.
Research funding agencies require that the results (publications and research data) of the research they fund be made Open Access. The list below includes the top two funders of research in Switzerland (SNSF and H2020). The BiUM publication management unit provides counseling to all FBM/CHUV researchers to address Open Access requirements, both for publications and for research data, regardless of their source of funding. We will give you support to find an adapted repository and to meet funding agencies requirements for Open Access.
27 May 2016: Europe has announced that all scientific papers should be free by 2020.The Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science came up with two major goals adopted by the 28 EU misnisters in may 2016. Those goals are: making publicly funded research to be full open access by 2020 and mandating open data- the sharing and reuse of research data.
Swiss Open Access national strategy & Transitioning Switzerland’s scientific publication system towards Open Access (OA). A study was initiated by the SNSF in collaboration with the Scientific Information programme (SUC P-2) run by swissuniversities. In their report, the model recommends a combined approach that makes both the “green road” and the “gold road” to Open Access possible.
31 January 2017: Swiss Open Access strategy approved
Switzerland is forging ahead with Open Access: the plenary meeting of swissuniversities has approved the national Open Access strategy.
The goal is for publications financed with Swiss public money to be accessible free of charge by 2024. On 31 January 2017, the plenary meeting of swissuniversities approved the national Open Access strategy. An action plan outlining the implementation of the strategy will be drawn up by the summer
1. October 2018: Covering the costs of scientific open access publications
The SNSF provides grants to finance scientific publications that are made available immediately, without restriction and free of charge (gold open access). Payment of processing charges can be requested via the OA platform of the SNSF (mySNF). There are three types of processing charges: For more information
4. September 2018: Open access to publications: the SNSF supports Europe’s Plan S
The European Commission and Science Europe, the association of national research and research funding organisations, are implementing Plan S in order to expedite structural change in the scientific publications sector. The aim is to make open access (OA) the standard in the European Research Area (ERA), including Switzerland, as of 2020.
Get an overview of the SNSF and H2020 Guidelines to comply with the requirements for Open Access of research results.
Have a look at the OpenAIRE European infrastructure, which enables researchers to comply with EU requirements for Open Access of research results. See also several innovative tools specially tested and selected by the BiUM (SPARC Europe open access diary and Sherpa/Juliet) to help researchers to learn more about OA funders policies.
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Open Access directive
The rules of the SNSF require grantees to make their research results available in an Open Access publication. This obligation applies both to journal articles and book publications that result from SNSF-funded research projects; it may be fulfilled either via the Green or the Gold Road (see below).
The SNSF gives researchers freedom of choice with regard to the place of publication and OA road.
Open Access (OA) SNSF rules:
i. Green Road to OA: researchers funded by the SNSF are required to, at least, deposit and provide Open Access to their work through an institutional (serval) or specialized repository (EuropePMC) in addition to having it published in a journal (provided that there are no insurmountable legal or technical obstacles).
Where to deposit?
Researchers should deposit in a repository for scientific publications (online archives) of their choice.
Institutional repository of the research institution within which they are affiliated (Servalfor UNIL/CHUV)
Publisher’s final version of the paper: publishers rarely allow the deposit of the published article (publisher PDF) to make it OA in a repository, except if authors pay publication fees (APCs) in OA journals or hybrid journals to make their article full open access.
Final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication, also called post-print: Often, publishers only allow the deposit and OA release of this author accepted version.
When should Open Access be provided?
Journal articles resulting from SNSF-funded research projects must be freely accessible in a discipline-specific or institutional repository no later than 6 months after publication in a traditional review.
ii. Gold Road to OA: the SNSF supports the Gold Road to OA by enabling researchers to cover the costs of direct publications in pure OA journals via their project budgets .
iii. The SNSF does not support hybrid OA. The costs are duplicated and cannot be controlled by the SNSF: indeed, the author is required to pay a relatively high publication fee while the publisher additionally sells access licenses to academic libraries at prices that are often just as high.
SNSF OA 2020 Policy
Overview
The National Open Access Strategy approved in spring 2017 represents an important step in establishing Open Access in Switzerland. It aims to ensure that all publications financed with public money are openly accessible by 2024.
The SNSF has decided to implement Open Access for all SNSF-funded publications already as of 2020. To facilitate the implementation of this policy, SNSF is realizing a range of measures and issues new regulations that will enter into force on 1 April 2018.
Covering the costs of scientific open access publications
The SNSF provides grants to finance scientific publications that are made available immediately, without restriction and free of charge (gold open access). Payment of processing charges can be requested via the OA platform of the SNSF (mySNF). For more information
The most important changes at a glance
Changes to OA policy
Gold OA for books as book processing charge (BPC)
Gold OA for book chapters as book chapter processing charge (BCPC)
Embargo of 12 instead of 24 months for books in green OA
Incentives and support
Upper limit for article processing charges (APCs) of CHF 3000 is not applicable for the time being
New platform for processing OA grants separately from ongoing projects
Compliance and controlling
Systematic monitoring of OA compliance
Automated feedback on OA compliance to grant holders
No more exceptions from the OA commitment for articles
Communication
Active communication of the OA policy to researchers, in mySNF and on the SNSF website
EU Framework Programme H2020, FP7 et ERC Open Access directive
Access website for more details. The detailed legal requirements on open access to publications are contained in article 29.2 of the Model Grant Agreement.
Under Horizon 2020, each beneficiary must ensure open access to all peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to its results.
For open access publishing, researchers can publish in open access journals, or in journals that sell subscriptions and also offer the possibility of making individual articles openly accessible (hybrid journals).
In all cases, researchers have the obligation to self-archive their published article in a repository to perenized their work (see below).
If a beneficiary breaches any of its obligations, the grant may be reduced (see Article 43). Such a breach may also lead to any of the other measures described in Chapter 6 of the Multi-beneficiary General Model Grant Agreement, Version 1.0, December 11, 2013).
In all cases, the Commission encourages authors to retain their copyright and grant adequate licences to publishers. Creative Commons offers useful licensing solutions in this regard (e.g. CC-BY, see Creative Commons Licenses).
In the context of the digital era, the notion of’ publication increasingly includes the data underpinning the publication and results presented, also referred to as ‘underlying’ data. Beneficiaries must aim to deposit the research data needed to validate the results presented in the deposited scientific publications, ideally into a data repository, and aim to make open access to this data. But there is no obligation to do so (except for the Open Research Data Pilot).
Self archiving and OA rules for publication and research data in H2020
The open access mandate is composed of two steps:
i. depositing publications into repositories
ii. providing open access to them.
These two steps may or may not occur at the same time, depending on whether open access publishing (gold open access) or self-archiving (green open access) is used, and, in the case of self-archiving, depending on the embargo period (if any).
What to deposit?
publisher’s final version of the paper, including all modifications from the peer review process, copyediting and stylistic edits, and formatting changes (usually a PDF document).
A final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication, including all modifications from the peer review process, but not yet formatted by the publisher (also referred to as “post-print” version).
Where to deposit?
Researchers should deposit in a repository for scientific publications (online archives) of their choice.
Institutional repository of the research institution within which they are affiliated (Servalfor UNIL/CHUV)
Each beneficiary must deposit as soon as possible and at the latest on publication.
When should Open Access be provided?
Each beneficiary must ensure open access to the deposited publication — via the repository — at the latest: (i) on publication, if an electronic version is available for free via the publisher, or (ii) within six months of publication in any other case.
OpenAIRE tool collects metadata from several data sources: publication repositories, data archives and CRIS across Europe and beyond. OpenAIRE portal contains already over 11.5 million OA documents from more than 600 data providers (repositories and journal aggregators).
This Diary is a useful round-up made by SPARC Europe to inform reserachers on what happened on Open Access in Europe in 2015. It provides useful context to understand the OA developments that will take place in 2016. For the open access news in 2014 please go here. The Diary has been compiled by tagging specifically-European items in the Open Access Tracking Project. SPARC Europe has organised it so that you can view the information by country and by discipline.
BiUM librarians are well aware of copyright and licenses legal issues and will help FBM/CHUV researchers in addressing these legal issues.
Tools
Ask us about the use of Creative Commons licences tool in order to make your document freely accessible while protecting your copyright.
Copyright
When an article is accepted for publication in a journal, the publisher asks the authors for the permission to publish it. At that step, publishing contracts often force authors to sign over their copyright and to provide a copyright transfer agreement that gives publishers the full rights and control to exploit the research article. As a consequence, authors may not longer be able anymore to reuse later on some parts of the article content or to make the publication available in OA after self-archiving without asking the publishers permission.
Authors need to make sure that they can still fulfill the OA and self-archiving requirements of their funding agencies and institutions after signing this copyright. Publishing contracts should therefore be checked carefully before signing them, to make sure that self-archiving and OA in a repository are permitted.
If you wish to learn more about Opinion on OA in Swiss law, please consult the ETH Bibliothek website
In the worst case, if authors cannot reach an arrangement with the publisher for making their work openly accessible, they should inform the funding agency office and may have to consider submitting their article to another journal.
Creative Commons (CC) offers six different copyright licenses that condition the legal copyright terms and allow the sharing and reuse of material. CC licenses incorporate a unique and innovative “three-layer” design (Legal Code layer, Human Readable layer and Machine readable layer). Authors can easily select and use CC licenses to mark their work as freely available. The most common licence among OA publishers is CC-BY.
All CC licenses require that users provide attribution to the creator when the material is used and shared. The CC BY license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon a work, even commercially, as long as they credit the author for the original creation. This is the most accommodating type of licenses offered. This license is recommended for OA and an optimal dissemination and use of licensed materials. The other five licenses combine BY with one or more of three additional license elements: NonCommercial (NC), which prohibits commercial use of the material; NoDerivatives (ND), which prohibits the sharing of adaptations of the material; and ShareAlike (SA), which requires adaptations of the material to be released under the same license.
Develop a publication strategy
Which content, where and how to publish your results?
Contact the BiUM publication management unit for criteria and additional information on journal selection.
Select a list of journals and reviews of interest in your research field.
Select the journal by taking into consideration several factors such as quality standard, reputation, impact factors, visibility and accessibility.
In you choose an Open access journal make sure that the journal you would like to publish in meets the criteria of scientific quality standard and doesn’t belong to a predatory publishing group. Assess the journal authenticity and quality by checking:
the publishers full contact details including its address
editorial board details
policy for author fees (publication costs)
some of their publications
the peer review process
if the Journal is listed in a reputable directory (JCR, DOAJ, COPE and QOAM)
Ask us about UNIL/CHUV Open Access institutional memberships to get discount publication fees.
Since July 2014, UNIL has been a Supporter Member at BioMed Central, allowing UNIL / CHUV researchers to benefit from a 15% discount on publishing fees in BioMed Central, SpringerOpen and ChemistryCentral.
Tools
Ask us about bibliometric tools that take into account the ranking of journals by disciplines (InCitesTM Journal Citation Reports and Eigenfactor project).
See also several innovative tools specially tested and selected by the BiUM (Think-Check-Submit, DOAJ, Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, HowOpenIsIt?, Quality Open Access Market, …)to help researchers assess the quality, authenticity, Openness and price of a journal.
The bibliometrics InCites application from Thomson Reuters provides the official journal Impact Factor and Eigenfactor Score of a journal ranked by discipline.
Journal Impact Factor:“ The journal Impact Factor (IF) is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years. An Impact Factor of 2.5 means that, on average, the articles published one or two year ago have been cited two and a half times. The citing works are from journals, proceedings, or books indexed by Web of Science. »
The 2014 impact factor of a journal would be calculated as follows:
2014 impact factor = A/B.
where:
A = the number of times that all items published in that journal in 2012 and 2013 were cited by indexed publications during 2014.
B = the total number of citable items published by that journal in 2012 and 2013.
(Note that 2014 impact factors are actually published in 2015; they cannot be calculated until all of the 2014 publications have been processed by the indexing agency).
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice
The Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE) has identified “principles of transparency and best practice that set apart legitimate journals and publishers from non-legitimate ones and to clarify that these principles form part of the criteria on which membership applications will be evaluated.” Access to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing,
“Think. Check. Submit”
The recently launched campaign “Think. Check. Submit” provides researchers with information about the criteria they should look for when selecting a journal to publish their work. It offers check lists to make sure you choose trusted journals for your research.
DOAJ
The DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open-access, peer-reviewed journals. Launched in 2003 at Lund University in Sweden, the DOAJ contains as of today a list of more than 10’000 OA journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and humanities. This directory is very helpful for researchers within the biomedical field to search for a suitable OA journal for publication.
HowOpenIsIt?
The HowOpenIsIt?® Open Access Spectrum (OAS) guide standardizes Open Access terminology in an easily understandable, comprehensive resource created by PLOS, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). The guide defines core components of Open Access and help you to judge how Open is the journal you would like to publish in.
Quality Open Access Market
The Quality Open Access Market (QOAM) is a market place for scientific and scholarly journals which publish articles in open access. Quality scoring of the journals in QOAM is based on academic crowd sourcing; price information includes institutional licensed pricing.Quality Open Access Market
List of Predatory Publishers
List of possibly predatory journals. The base for this list was extracted from the archive of Beall’s list. It will be updated as new information or suggested edits are submitted or found by the maintainers of this site.
This list is only for individual journals. See the other list for publishers potentially engaging in predatory practices.
The BiUM publication management unit helps all FBM/CHUV researchers finding OA journals and articles.
Tools
Several aggregator tools have been selected by the BiUM to help researchers finding Open Access repositories where they can retrieve OA articles.
articles are currently dispersed all around the world on a multitude of repositories. In addition to Google Scholar, some authoritative directories such as CORE Discovery, Open Access Button, Unpaywall, Base, DAI, OpenAIRE Roarmap and OpenDOAR help exploring repositories Open Access journals and papers. Researchers looking for published article related to their research question need to visit each repository individually and manually search for OA articles on each of them.
CORE Discovery
CORE Discovery helps users to discover freely accessible copies of research papers. It is backed by our huge dataset of millions of full text open access papers as well as content from widely used external services beyond CORE. Discovery reduces the time it takes to access full texts of research papers and the frustration associated with hitting a paywall on the publisher’s site.
Give via their borwser extension a scholarly paper and they will search thousands of sources with millions of articles to link you to free, legal, full text articles instantly.
Unpaywall
Unpaywall is a open database of 20 million free scholarly articles.
Open Access content from over 50,000 publishers and repositories is harvested, and made easy to find, track, and use via its web integrated extension.
Paperity
Paperity is the first multidisciplinary aggregator of Open Access journals and papers, “gold” and “hybrid”.
This service gives readers easy and unconstrained access to thousands of journals from hundreds of disciplines, in one central location.
OpenDOAR
OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) is an authoritative directory of academic OA repositories developed by SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid Environment for Research Preservation and Access). This service provides a search for institutional and subject-based repositories contents, as well as archives set up by funding agencies like the National Institutes for Health in the USA or the Wellcome Trust in the UK and Europe. This service is useful to users wishing to find original research papers.
Base
Base is an online directory that provides access to 90000 OA references harvested from 4000 different sources included repository , e-journal and data bases.
Dissem
Dissemin is a free service to help researchers verify that their publications are freely accessible to their readers. This service identifies your papers that can be obtained only with paid subscription, and you can post them online with a few clicks on Zenodo , an innovative deposit supported by the EU (see our FBM/CHUV community on Zenodo).
ROARMAP
The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) is a searchable international registry charting the growth of open access mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders that require or request their researchers to provide open access to their peer-reviewed research article output by depositing it in an open access repository.
Author’s responsibilities and guidelines
« Plagiarism, counterfeiting and faking documents or results are actions which are unanimously considered a serious misconduct, punishable by the UNIL, which can even lead to penal proceedings. Compliance with the following guidelines are requested for UNIL and CHUV researchers ».
Section 2 of the guideline includes advice on research results interpretation (2.8), results quality versus quantity (2.9), scientific publication, authorship (2.10) and scientific integrity (3.2.3).
The guideline specifies the way researchers from UNIL and CHUV should declare their institutional affiliation within publications and scientific communications.
Unless otherwise stated, all materials created by the BiUM are licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY NC ND Lebrand C.- BiUM library-2016) unless otherwise noted.
While the citation advantage of OA published articles remains a subject of debate, the review made by SPARC on a large number of studies confirms the added value of OA (see several sources of information bellow). On average, the citation advantage of OA papers is 40.3% more citations while the citation disadvantage is 27% less citations for non-OA papers (based on a total sample size of 209,000 papers) (Archambault E. et al., 2014).
